


Strength

by TeaRoses



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-06
Updated: 2012-05-06
Packaged: 2017-11-04 22:30:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/398916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaRoses/pseuds/TeaRoses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prim knows too much for a child her age.  They all do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strength

**Author's Note:**

  * For [googlebrat](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=googlebrat).



> Thank you very much to my beta, meganbmoore. Any mistakes are entirely my own.

Prim knows about the Meeting. She is one of the only people who does know besides the families. Many people must suspect it exists, but few others know for certain and no one tries to visit who doesn't belong.

Except for Prim. Her sister isn't the only one who was left alone for long hours while their mother gave in to her sorrow. She was too young to be much use to Katniss but she explored District Twelve on her own and eavesdropped on Meetings more than once. She thinks that every District must have these gatherings, even Districts like One and Two. But she isn't supposed to think about the other Districts, is she? 

Like many children, she has nightmares about the Games. Eavesdropping on the Meetings doesn't actually help. 

Today is two days after the Reaping, and everyone is waiting tensely for the beginning of the Games. This Meeting is in a small clearing near, but not too near, to the fence that surrounds District Twelve. Not all the families come at once. That would be too many people, and far too suspicious. Today there are twelve people, and Prim recognizes all of them.

The oldest speaks first, by custom. This is Feather Demount, a tall proud-looking woman whose dark hair is streaked with white. She lost a son to the Games almost forty years ago, and a husband to the mines ten years later. She has other children, and lost a daughter as well to disease, but only those who meet here know how much the death of Ross occupies her mind. His name is etched on the skin of her belly. She showed the group once, and that time Prim risked her hiding place to look.

"We'll have two more families soon," Feather says. 

"Or maybe only one," says Greene Hillsbro softly.

"You really think Katniss has what it takes to win?" 

Prim covers her ears, not wanting to hear the rest. Soon she'll know. Katniss will come home, or she won't.

At that thought Prim almost cries out, because it isn't that simple. Prim will be watching whatever happens. If Katniss dies, Prim will see her last moments. The Peacekeepers will make certain of that. Families have tried to hide from the screen before, but they can't.

She removes her hands from her ears and listens more. It occurs to her no one mentions Peeta's chances. She barely knows Peeta, but she still doesn't want to watch him die. She doesn't want to watch anyone die, in fact, but she doesn't have a choice.

"And if she does win, they'll have another Haymitch on their hands, I'll bet," says Branch Tolwin. He lost a daughter to the games five years ago. Prim still knows his younger daughter, Opal, and plays with her. Opal never talks about her older sister, about the fear she must have felt when she ran from the Cornucopia and was killed a few hours later. 

But Prim has heard Branch tell the story at meetings, about the look on her face when the knife hit her. Prim wonders what look Katniss will wear, when she loses the games... or when she wins. Could she really become another Haymitch, lost in a bottle? 

"That's not going to happen," insists Feather. "I've known that girl all her life. She'll take care of her family."

Someone coughs. Even here no one wants to say the obvious out loud, that maybe Haymitch would be different if he had a family to take care of.

"Look what she's already done," Feather continues. "Volunteering to save Prim."

"Prim would have been less of a loss to the family though." From her hiding place Prim can't see the man who says that, and she's glad. 

"Shut up," says Branch, but whoever it is keeps talking.

"Face facts. Katniss knows what she's doing. They all would have died if it weren't for her. Prim is helpless. What will she do for their mom, take care of the damn goat?"

This is a thought that has occurred to Prim also, that Katniss should never have volunteered in her place. Prim could walk off to die and Katniss and their mother would go on, but without Katniss, what will happen? Their mother will fall apart again if Katniss dies, that's certain. And what will Prim do? Even Katniss could only think of the goat in her brief words before the Peacekeepers ended their meeting.

"Prim is too young," someone else agrees. "She's a good kid, but she doesn't know what she's doing."

"She was old enough to be sent to die," says Feather.

Finally the members of the meeting change the subject, start talking about Games past and their own lost sons and daughters. Prim forces herself to listen, because this may be her mother soon. 

And she will not do what they think she will -- fall apart along with her mother. She can't become another Katniss. Yesterday she tried to lift the bow and could barely manage to pull the string back. But she knows this place and how to survive in it. Gale will help them, and without demanding a price. Peeta will help too, on the off chance he survives.

Prim makes fists of her hands as she listens to the horror stories of the Arena and the broken families it left. She won't die, and she won't let their mother die. If she has to break her promise to Katniss and take tesserae, she will do that. If she has to do something worse, she will do that too.

And if Katniss comes home -- Prim is smart enough to know that it's "if" and not "when," -- then Prim will help her, too. Help her to remember that the blood is on her hands for a reason. She can give Katniss reminders that she still has people to love.

Prim knows she has never been the strong one, but she can be stronger than anyone thinks, and she will be. She will be the one to save their family if that's what it takes. 

She finally walks away from the Meeting and its tears. Even the people here think she is too young and innocent to be the one worth saving, but no one is truly innocent in this place. And they of all people should realize that.


End file.
